Naive. Super

Erlend Loe (born 1969) — a popular Norwegian writer, critic, screenwriter, and director of theater and film, laureate of several national and international awards. Before devoting himself to literature, he managed to work in various fields: he performed on stage, directed short films and music videos, worked in a psychiatric hospital, as a school teacher, and as a critic in a newspaper, translating his idol Richard Brautigan's «Dreams of Babylon» into Norwegian. He debuted with the novel «The Power of a Woman» which was recognized by critics as «extremely funny and skillful» and was successfully adapted into a film in 2008. Loe's second novel «Naive. Super» — a straightforward story told from the perspective of a thirty-year-old protagonist about very complex things, a situational comedy with elements of a parable, a humorous study about the lost meaning of life — has been translated into two dozen languages, received with enthusiasm everywhere, including Russia, became a European bestseller, and made the author a figure that can be described as cult. This charming and ironically restrained work is akin to good primitive, «naive» painting — at first glance simple and funny, upon closer inspection — smart and touching, and the details, despite the overall apparent simplicity, are rendered precisely and masterfully.